Is there a way to disable automatic updates of Discourse? I’d rather review these as they become available and then choose whether or not to install them.
AI-generated summary
In a discussion titled ‘Disabling Automatic Updates’ under the Support category, PeakProsperity asked whether automatic Discourse updates can be disabled to allow manual review before installation. JammyDodger clarified that self-hosted instances can control update timing, though advised against delaying for security reasons, while managed hosting offers less flexibility. merefield noted that self-hosted setups don’t auto-update unless a script or plugin triggers a rebuild. PeakProsperity reported unexpected behavior: their site crashed during a plugin install due to a syntax change (variables with ‘=’ no longer accepted), and the dashboard showed an update 17 hours prior — despite no manual updates since April. merefield suggested checking the dashboard’s blue commit code for update details. Jagster and merefield explained that installing plugins requires a rebuild, which inherently updates the site — often including database migrations. PeakProsperity confirmed the dashboard showed an update timestamp but no intentional updates since March/April. JammyDodger reiterated that plugin installs trigger rebuilds and thus updates. PeakProsperity acknowledged this explained the mystery update and thanked the community. The consensus: no true ‘automatic’ updates occur without a rebuild — but plugin installs trigger them unavoidably.
If you’re self-hosted you can pick and choose when to update. 
(though try not to leave it too long so you don’t miss out on security fixes, etc) If you’re on managed hosting there is less choice. 
Depending on who you’re hosted with you could maybe ask them what their options are?
Yeah, if you are still self-hosted, unless someone has written a script for you, there is no automated update afaia.
Maybe someone in the team rebuilt to add a plugin?
I’m self-hosted and was under the impression no automatic updates would happen, but then two things happened:
- Today our host went to install a plugin and our site went down for nearly 20 minutes because, unbeknownst to him, the Discourse setup was no longer accepting variables with an ‘=’ sign, making us believe something must have changed since we last performed this operation.
- I noticed the dashboard was saying “Discourse last updated 17 hours ago” even though nobody from our team had initiated any updates. It had recently been saying it was out of date, too. We haven’t installed any updates since the beginning of April.
Because installing a plugin requires rebuilding and then will happend updating too. AFAIK you can’t avoid that.
Yep as per my comment above: you can’t install a plugin without a rebuild.
One of the main reasons for that is that plugins sometimes require a database migration.
We have not purposefully run any updates since end of March / beginning of April.
If you rebuilt to install a plugin the site would have been updated through that process.
Ah that would explain it! Thanks.